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" I love the way ravens fly; they are the most acrobatic and daring birds. "

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" I have maintained a passionate interest in education, which leads me occasionally to make foolish and ill-considered remarks alleging that not everything is well in our schools. "

" For that reason you can't write with music playing, and anyone who says he can is either writing badly, or not listening to the music, or lying. You need to hear what you're writing, and for that you need silence. "

" Every government secretary of state or minister should jolly well go to the theatre, go to a concert, go to an art gallery, go to a museum, become somehow interested in these things. If they're not interested, they shouldn't be in government, full stop. "

" We don't need lists of rights and wrongs, tables of do's and don'ts: we need books, time, and silence. Thou shalt not is soon forgotten, but Once upon a time lasts forever. "

" Everyone in the book's ecology, starting with the author and including the publisher, the distributor, the booksellers, the libraries, and ending up with the reader, should benefit from a healthy book trade. "

" If you can't think of what to write, tough luck; write anyway. If you can think of lots more when you've finished the three pages, don't write it; it'll be that much easier to get going next day. "

" I love all types of music - jazz, great pop music, world music and folk music - but the music I listen to most is piano music from the 18th, 19th and 20th century. Russian music in particular. "

" I don't like it when I see my books sold cheaply. "

" Possibly because I earn my living as a writer of fiction and possibly because it's just the sensible thing to do, I like to pay attention to everything I come across, including things that evoke the uncanny or the mysterious. "

" I write in pen because it works. A fountain pen is no good for writing in the way I do because I'd have to decide, each time I stopped, how long I was likely to stop for in order to know whether or not to put the cap on. But I never know. So instead, I use a ballpoint - a Montblanc, to be precise - the most comfortably balanced pen I've ever found. "

" I had passed through the entire British education system studying literature, culminating in three years of reading English at Oxford, and they'd never told me about something as basic as the importance of point of view in fiction! "

" Being in love was like China: you knew it was there, and no doubt it was very interesting, and some people went there, but I never would. I'd spend all my life without ever going to China, but it wouldn't matter, because there was all the rest of the world to visit. "

" True education flowers at the point when delight falls in love with responsibility. "

" And before I'd got to the end of the first paragraph, I'd come up slap bang against a fundamental problem that still troubles me today whenever I begin a story, and it's this: where am I telling it from? "

" The function of a book or a poem or a story is to delight, to enchant, to beguile. "

" Theatre is one of those things that children will love if they're helped to get there to see it. No child will find his or her own way to the theatre. "

" One curious thing about growing up is that you don't only move forward in time; you move backwards as well, as pieces of your parents' and grandparents' lives come to you. "

" Comics are a wonderful form. You can do so much with it. "

" One handy piece of equipment, which I recommend to any writer of fiction, is a set of Myriorama cards. I consult them frequently. "

" The best sort of activity is one that combines mental effort with sensuous delight. That's why I love drawing. "

" You're lacking a human dimension of some sort if you're not interested in the arts. "

" Everything has a meaning, if only we could read it. "

" Trying to understand superstition rationally is like trying to pick up something made of wood by using a magnet. "

" I like every individual editor, designer, marketing and publicity person I deal with, but I don't like what publishers, corporately, are doing to the ecology of the book world. It's damaging, and it should change. "

" What I couldn't help noticing was that I learned more about the novel in a morning by trying to write a page of one than I'd learned in seven years or so of trying to write criticism. "

" The only instrument I play myself is the ukulele. "

" For a long time I thought I was a poet, but that's a high title to claim. "

" If a nation allows its literary culture to die, it's a sign that it doesn't fundamentally care. "

" I tried writing out a plot with the second or third novel I wrote, and it was so boring, so desperately boring. "

" Argue with anything else, but don't argue with your own nature. "